In the list of core ingredients for high-end cosmetics and personal care products, squalane—an elite skincare component—has always held a prominent position.
And the starting point of it all lies in its precursor: squalene. Through a single hydrogenation step, squalene is converted into squalane, the well-known skincare star we are familiar with.
Squalane can quickly penetrate the skin to form a natural moisture-locking barrier, strengthen the skin barrier, and is suitable for almost all skin types.
Such an ideal ingredient is favored by consumers worldwide.
Then, what kind of rapidly growing market is squalene— the substance that supports its production—facing?
The global demand for squalene continues to grow, and its market size is expected to maintain a significant growth rate in the coming years.
It is projected that the squalene market share will reach 0USD billion by 2035.
However, behind this growth hides a supply chain issue that cannot be ignored: where exactly does the squalene supporting all this come from?
Accounting for 24.4% of squalene production. Nearly0 deep-sea sharks are hunted and killed annually for this purpose.
Multiple shark species have become endangered due to overfishing, inflicting irreversible damage to the marine ecosystem.
Representing 58.2% of production, squalene is extracted from plants such as olives.
The yield is extremely low—up to 2,000 to 3,000 kilograms of olives are needed to extract just 1 kilogram of squalene.
This process consumes enormous amounts of land and freshwater resources, making true large-scale production difficult.
Contributing 24.4% of squalene output.
The squalene yield of existing bacterial strains is extremely low, and the production cost is high, resulting in products that are completely uncompetitive in terms of price compared to those from traditional sources.
This has kept this technology confined to the laboratory stage for years, with no impactful commercial application achieved.
At the same time, we have found that millions of tons of waste oil enter the environment every year, causing severe environmental pollution—the volume of polluted water is 100 times that of the waste itself.
This represents a huge waste of resources and a dual burden on the environment.
On one side, there are ecological, resource, and technological bottlenecks brought about by shark liver oil extraction, plant extraction, and inefficient fermentation.
On the other side, there is the heavy environmental burden caused by millions of tons of waste oil. Can we transform the biggest environmental burden into the most valuable resource?
We have chosen Yarrowia lipolytica as our "cell factory".
It is a generally recognized safe microorganism, inherently capable of efficiently metabolizing waste oil, making it the perfect starting point for waste oil conversion.
We have innovatively adopted a compartmentalization strategy to precisely reconstruct and enhance the squalene synthesis pathway in this yeast.
We have lifted the cell's inherent metabolic inhibition to ensure that carbon flux can efficiently flow from waste oil to the target product (squalene).
We have developed a supporting proprietary fermentation process to provide the optimal production environment for this "cell factory", maximizing its conversion efficiency and squalene yield.
Click on the sections below to learn more about different aspects of our project
